Co-author Dr Marcus Lohr, from the Open University, told BBC News that these contact binaries were stars that orbit so closely they share an outer atmosphere.

The other star pair - a detached binary - has a separation distance of some three million km. The two binaries orbit in the same plane at a distance of 21 billion km.

Follow-up observations of different wavelengths of light coming from the star system uncovered a fifth star, which is linked to the detached binary star.

"This is a truly exotic star system. In principle there's no reason why it couldn't have planets in orbit around each of the pairs of stars. Any inhabitants would have a sky that would put the makers of Star Wars to shame," Dr Lohr said.

"There could sometimes be no fewer than five Suns of different brightnesses lighting up the landscape."

Dr Lohr said the fact the stars all orbited in the same plane suggested they had all formed out of the same "proto-stellar disk" of dust and gas.

He added that systems containing this many linked stars were extremely rare, but at least one other five-star system had been discovered by Nasa's Kepler planet-hunting telescope.